Exchange-spring magnets are nanocomposites that are composed of magnetically hard and soft phases that interact by magnetic exchange coupling. Such systems are promising for advanced permanent magnetic applications, as they have a large energy product--the combination of permanent magnet field and magnetization--compared to traditional, single-phase materials. Conventional techniques, including melt-spinning, mechanical milling and sputtering, have been explored to prepare exchange-spring magnets. However, the requirement that both the hard and soft phases are controlled at the nanometre scale, to ensure efficient exchange coupling, has posed significant preparation challenges. Here we report the fabrication of exchange-coupled nanocomposites using nanoparticle self-assembly. In this approach, both FePt and Fe3O4 particles are incorporated as nanometre-scale building blocks into binary assemblies. Subsequent annealing converts the assembly into FePt-Fe3Pt nanocomposites, where FePt is a magnetically hard phase and Fe3Pt a soft phase. An optimum exchange coupling, and therefore an optimum energy product, can be obtained by independently tuning the size and composition of the individual building blocks. We have produced exchange-coupled isotropic FePt-Fe3Pt nanocomposites with an energy product of 20.1 MG Oe, which exceeds the theoretical limit of 13 MG Oe for non-exchange-coupled isotropic FePt by over 50 per cent.

Magnetic properties of nanocomposite Fe–Pt films with Fe concentration higher than 50 at % have been investigated in this study. Fe/Pt multilayers were produced by sputtering and magnetic hardening was observed after heat treatment including rapid annealing. The final nanocomposite films consisted of the hard face-centered tetragonal FePt phase and a soft face-centered-cubic phase. The maximum energy products of the optimally processed samples exceeded 40 MGOe. Evidence for exchange coupling of the hard and soft phases was found.

We have produced exchange-coupled FePt nanoparticle assemblies by chemical synthesis and subsequent thermal annealing. As the interparticle distances decrease by tuning the annealing conditions, interparticle interactions change from dipolar type to exchange type, and the magnetization reversal mechanism switches from rotation controlled to domain-nucleation controlled. With increasing annealing temperature, the coercivity first increases due to improved chemical ordering, and then drops significantly, resulting from excessive interparticle exchange coupling. For the samples exhibiting exchange coupling, both the remanence ratio and coercive squareness increase.

The effect of the magnetic anisotropy of the Nd–Co soft phase on its exchange field (Hex) is reported for epitaxial Sm–Co/Nd–Co bilayers. It is found that Hex gradually increases with anisotropy K of the soft phase. The experimental values of Hex as well as its variation with K are quantitatively interpreted using an analytical model based on the formation of a partial domain wall on the soft phase side of the interface. The results suggest that one can enhance Hex, and hence, the volume fraction of the soft phase for effective exchange spring coupling between the hard and soft phases, by tailoring the anisotropy of the soft phase.

A comprehensive review is given of recent advances in the study of metastable phases in rare-earth permanent magnets. The relations between the structures of the metastable and equilibrium phases and the transformations from the former to the latter are discussed. The formation of the phases is found to depend on the difference between the symmetries of the metastable and equilibrium phases. The magnetic properties of the metastable-phase rare-earth permanent magnets synthesized by various processes, such as mechanical alloying, mechanical milling, rapid quenching, hydrogenation, disproportionation, desorption and recombination, solid-state reaction, solid-gas reaction, self-flux and sputtering, are compared. The main conclusion of this article is that searching for new metastable phases with high magnetic performance will be one of the most active directions in the research on rare-earth permanent magnets.